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From: clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke)
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Subject: U of Toronto Comp. Sci. events, week of May 6
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Date: Tue, 30-Apr-85 09:47:56 EDT
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Posted: Tue Apr 30 09:47:56 1985
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             ACTIVITIES FOR THE WEEK COMMENCING MAY 6, 1985
        (SF = Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King's College Road)


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR - Tuesday, May 7, 3 pm, SF 1101
                           Dr. Wolfgang Bibel
                     Technische Universitat Munchen
                      Federal Republic of Germany

              "The Connection Method and Plan Generation"


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR - Friday, May 10, 11 am, SF 1101
                             Matt Ginsberg
                          Stanford University

                      "Counterfactual Implication"

Abstract:    Counterfactuals are a form of non-monotonic inference  that
has been of long-term interest to philosophers.  In this talk, I discuss
the problem of deriving counterfactual statements from a predicate  cal-
culus database. and present a formal description of this derivation that
allows the encoding of some context-dependent information in the  choice
of  a sub-language of the logical language in which we are working.  The
construction is formally identical to the "possible worlds"  interpreta-
tion due to David Lewis.

     A concrete example is given which uses  counterfactual  implication
for  the  purpose of diagnosing digital hardware, and the talk concludes
with a discussion of possible applications of counterfactuals  elsewhere
in AI.